What is to Become of the Canadas?

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WHAT IS TO BECOME OF THE CANADAS?

Among the articles in the current number of Blackwood’s Magazine,¹ which we noticed yesterday, is one on the North American colonies, which will be read with interest on this side of the Atlantic. It seems that Mr. Justice Haliburton² (Sam Slick) is lecturing and speech-making in various parts of England, denouncing the present mode of governing the Canadas, and suggesting that the British Provinces should be formed into a kind of federal union, in some respects analogous to that of the United States, but instead of a President elected by the people to have a Viceroy sent from England in the shape of a nobleman of high rank. Justice Haliburton tells the English people pretty plainly that the Canadians will not submit much longer to the insolence and neglect with which they are treated by the Colonial Office, headed by a Secretary who goes out of office at the overthrow of every successive administration, so that his services are lost just where they begin to be most valuable, by having become somewhat familiar with his duties.

Mr. Haliburton states a fact in one of his speeches which strikingly illustrates the truth of the description given by Dickens, in Little Dorrit,³ of the great Circumlocution Office and the way in which the bureaucracy of England contrive “How Not To Do It.” During the Crimean war, an offer was made by the Canadian subjects of Queen Victoria to raise two regiments, to be commanded by colonial officers, but to be like the rest under the direction of the general in chief. This offer, made by responsible parties, was forwarded to the government in London, and returned unanswered! because it had been addressed to the wrong department of the government offices in Downing street. The Canadians, one would think, must have had the sentiment of loyalty pretty deeply engrafted within them, or they would have revolted forthwith. Conduct far less insulting and supercilious on the part of rulers has ere now plunged nations into rebellion.

If Mr. Haliburton’s opinion is to be relied on, it is clear that British North America will not remain much longer in its present political condition; and if the government of Great Britain permit their attention to be drawn, either by India, China, or any other subject, away from the imperative duty of forming a new and entirely different plan of government for the Provinces, they may as well make up their minds to lose the sovereignty over them altogether. Blackwood⁴ also takes this view, and discusses the inquiry of what, in such an event, the Canadians would do. Would they be able to form themselves into a monarchy, or into a rival federated Republic to this, or would they be absorbed and annexed by their giant neighbor? The latter conclusion is the unwilling but inevitable one, both of the Justice and the Magazinist. Assuming that Canada is monarchial now in her predilections, yet a rupture with England could not fail to induce a disgust and quarrel with monarchical traditions. And there is no ground for supposing that the different Provinces could fuse into one Republic, since they are now five colonies, unconnected with each other, except in virtue of their common allegiance to England: they have five separate jurisdictions, five tariffs, five currencies, and five codes of laws all differing from each other. Is it not more likely, therefore, that in the event of a rupture with England they would enter this Union, than assimilate into one Republic with those from whom now they so widely differ?

But the grand end proposed by Blackwood in calling attention to the subject is to secure a representation of the North American Provinces in the British House of Commons—an event which if brought about in the Reform Bill anticipated next winter, may not unlikely tend to strengthen the bonds of union between the Canadas and Britain, divert to Canada the bulk of the emigration which now arrives here, and extinguish whatever anticipations we may have formed of the future annexation of Canada to the American Union.

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